RE: [casi] Campaign Against Sanctions?

["Colin Rowat" <c.rowat@DELETETHISespero.org.uk>]

> It seems that this list has lost all meaning. To some this has
> become an anti-War list, to others it's a pro-Saddam list, but it
> none, or so it seems, is this an anti-sanctions list.
>
> My main objective has always been to get rid of sanctions. But I
> am a realist too. I realise that currently, the quickest way to
> get rid of sanctions, the way that will save the most amount of
> lives - because I truly believe that millions have died - is to
> not oppose the US's regime change.
>
> I will no doubt get booed for this by many. But I ask,
> realistically speaking, leaving idealistic scenarios alone, what
> other solutions can we follow?

Dear Sama and others,

I share your concerns, which I think extend beyond the list.  The debate on
Iraq has been shaken up a great deal in the past year or so, and possibly
greatly complicated.  This, I think, has led to some intellectual disarray
as well, part of which may be reflected on the list.

I also share your perception that the fastest way to remove sanctions may be
to allow the US to topple Saddam's regime, in part given the US' commitment,
this past decade, to not allowing Iraq's economic normalisation under
Saddam.  I felt uncomfortable coming to this sense, as it is not 'right'
somehow: I dislike feeling that the US should be able to evade
responsibility for its bankrupt and lethal policy by shooting its way out of
it.  But, if that did allow Iraq to rebuild, and to restart its life,
perhaps it is a price worth paying.

I've become less comfortable with this conclusion over the past months,
though, for at least two reasons.  First, when I travelled to Baghdad in May
for a week (to a conference hosted by the Iraqi government - I was therefore
their guest; my speech was the first, after two days, to receive a rebuttal
from Tariq Aziz, the chair; the subsequent conference bulletin printed his
rebuttal, but not my remarks) I was able to put faces to this argument.  I
saw friends, and could see how worried they were about what their future
held.  I attended a private function hosted by one of them and was asked to
say a few words.  I made a few joking and banal remarks about being put on
the spot but was then saved by a woman who asked whether people in the UK
were listening.  My perception of the mood changed completely: I sensed that
part of what she was asking me was whether she would live or die.

A second memory that left an impression on me was a supper with friends on
another night in a restaurant.  As I watched the children playing in the
swings and running about, I had the sense that, for some (and not just
Saddam's cronies?), some semblance of normal life was being restored in Iraq
after a decade of trauma: the house of cards was being slowly rebuilt.  The
prospect of removing a single card buried deep within that house struck me
as a daunting one, and the costs of failure became tangible - children on
swings.

Intellectually, these experiences didn't change my arguments, but they did
put faces on them, and helped me to feel some part of the new fear that many
Iraqis must feel.  This had made it more difficult for me personally to feel
supportive of the US in this.

My second concern is that I simply do not trust the Bush administration.
Bush condemns Palestinian terrorism from the golf course and, without
pausing, asks the press to watch his drive.  Cheney strikes me as a deeply
secretive individual, who prefers operating in shadows, something that I
find at odds with democracy's basic premise of government by the people.
Rumsfeld's penchant for presenting pure speculation as fact as long as it
advances his agenda is equally antithetical to what I would like to see in a
democracy; while I understand the importance of pragmatism, this cynicism
disturbs me.

Further, I do not trust their agenda - in part because I do not think that
it has been honestly presented.  It is clear that Iraqi disarmament only
forms a small component of what this is about: were it the largest priority,
I think that US assurances that this was their largest priority would now
see Saddam eagerly swallow a lot of pride and welcome in full, unfettered
inspections.  A large part of it does seem to be about toppling Saddam.  If
the only consequence of this was Saddam's deposition, then I would have no
concerns with this.  But there are other consequences, which I do not know
how to properly assess: how many civilians will be killed; what does the US
administration regard as an acceptable post-Saddam scenario (the Hashemite
monarch that the neo-cons have been promoting? a democracy, which might
therefore be Shi'a dominated? an Iraqi Musharraf? what economic return will
the US demand on its possible expenditure of tens of billions of dollars in
Iraq?); how will international affairs be changed by this sort of a
precedent?

I think that these are important concerns, but they are not being addressed
by this administration, which avoids them, pretending that this is just a
simple issue of appeasing Saddam or not appeasing him.  This blinkered
presentation was noted by Senator Lugar, the ranking Republican on the
Senate Foreign Relations Commmittee.  Noting the range of issues discussed
during their hearings on Iraq, he said: "This is a whole lot more . . . than
I hear anybody in our administration talking about".  A oft used argument
against altering or lifting the sanctions was that there was no coherent
alternative: the Bush administration does not seem to me to be interested in
setting out a coherent and comprehensive vision for Iraq.

I am therefore being asked to trust that a US administration whose senior
members I do not trust, and who deny the concerns that I feel to be
important, will make the right decisions for Iraq's future.  My worries are
further deepened when I note that this administration seems committed to a
narrowly self-interested view of foreign policy, has helped cut Iraqi
oil-for-food sales in half and seems to have adopted Israeli foreign policy
positions with respect to the Middle East.  Indirectly, Bush's presidency
was listless before 11 September 2001, the economy softening, corporate
scandal wrapping its tendrils around senior officials.  I am therefore
worried that Iraq policy is being used to distract American attention.

So, what alternatives do I propose?  For years, I've thought that they must
focus on process: the soundest basis for a good outcome is one in which due
process is attempted.  The Security Council is therefore an inappropriate
body for this as the US veto on it places the US in the role of both an
interested party in the case and a judge, a deep perversion of any notion of
justice or due process.  There are provisions in UN history for the General
Assembly to involve itself in issues of international peace and security
when the Council fails to uphold its responsibility.  This path has not been
pursued yet here; I think it worth pursuing.  There are concerns about the
compromises that would result, but I suspect that a majority of the UN's 190
or so members would agree that Iraq must adhere to the disarmament
provisions of SCR 687.  The fact that Arab states, which apparently oppose
an invasion, are pushing for Iraqi admission of inspectors, seems to be a
fairly strong sign of this.

Further, a GA resolution with the support of a majority of the world's
nations would present the Iraqi government with a far greater challenge than
do Security Council resolutions, which can be (without too much distortion,
I think), delegitimised as US/UK resolutions.  Bush, incidentally,
implicitly recognised this by choosing to address the General Assembly last
week rather than the Security Council: the GA is the best approximation to
the international community that we have.

In conclusion, let me pick up on a few points made by subsequent postings to
this list.  I share Saibal's concern about civilian casualties, but fear
(with Dirk) that - if a war does actually occur - they will be much than
those in the US last 11 September.  Beth Osborne Daponte, who was a
demographer with the US Bureau of the Census until she began to estimate
Iraqi mortality arising from the Gulf War, later published an analysis of
this in the Physicians for Social Responsibility Quarterly
(http://www.ippnw.org/MGS/PSRQV3N2Daponte.html).  She concludes that:

<begin quote>
According to the methods described in this paper, the number of Iraqis who
died in 1991 from effects of the Gulf war or postwar turmoil approximates
205,500. There were relatively few deaths (approximately 56,000 to military
personnel and 3,500 to civilians) from direct war effects. Postwar violence
accounted for approximately 35,000 deaths. The largest component of deaths
in this reconstruction derives from the 111,000 attributable to postwar
adverse health effects. Of the total excess deaths in the Iraqi population,
approximately 109,000 were to men, 23,000 to women, 74,000 to children.
<end quote>

Yours,

Colin Rowat

work | Room 406, Department of Economics | The University of Birmingham |
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